By Tom Burke
Talking about gun control is tough. Doing something about it, even tougher.
First, there’s so much misinformation, on both sides, that unless there’s agreement on just basic terminology, the two sides are talking past each other. Then, there’s the debate whether the problem is the people doing the shooting or the guns they shoot. Finally, the issue of what works in real life versus “common-sense” theories is contentious.
Frankly, for me, it’s too complex an issue to be definitive in one column.
But as I reacted to the horror at Parkland, Florida, and marveled at last Wednesday’s memorial walkout, I thought about my own youth and the kids I schooled with.
In the 1950s and ’60s guns were easy to get. Way easier than today. Sporting rifles, pistols, shotguns, even heavy-duty surplus weapons from World War I and II and Korea, like the famous M1 Garand battle-rifle or M1-carbine, were cheap, plentiful and could be purchased through the mail. Back then: no permits, background checks, or even face-to-face transactions. Just send the money, wait for the mailman, and own a gun once used in combat. Really.
And there were practically zero teenage/school “mass shootings.” The first mass-casualty school shooting was committed by a definite non-teen, 25-year-old Charles Whitman, at University of Texas in 1966. There wasn’t another student-committed mass killing (more than four deaths) until 1997 at Pearl High School and then Columbine in 1999. After that, students killing students accelerated in both frequency and death toll.
So I’m asking myself, “If guns were so easy to get back then, why weren’t there any Newtown-scale school shootings until 1999? What drives a teen to take a gun and destroy classmates in 2018, when they didn’t in 1963? Are the kids different? Society? What’s changed?
(Hint: It isn’t the guns. Shotguns, pistols and revolvers are the same today as in the 50s, in terms of caliber and capacity. And what some today call “assault rifles” (and others call “sporting arms”), are simply semi-automatic rifles (like the 1963 Remington), made of plastic instead of wood, superficially resembling military arms, and tougher to buy now than in 1965. Just a modicum of basic research shows weaponry today isn’t functionally different than in the ’50s; it just looks different.)
Now, to find some answers, I found an expert, asking Dr. Henry Berman, a clinical professor at Seattle Children’s Hospital/University of Washington, “What’s changed (with boys)?”
His initial answer was encouraging, “Boys are boys, they haven’t changed.” Whew. However, he added, “But the world of boys is different than it was 50 years ago, even 25 years ago.”
Adding, “Society’s changes have altered boys’ behavior.”
He contrasted some of the societal differences between the ’50s and today citing: reduced job opportunities; sex (almost all the killers didn’t have girlfriends); social media pressure; bullying; hero worship (Adam Lanza dressed like the Columbine killers and watched videos of their massacre); the influence of omnipresent media; and the glorification of killers.
Berman explained that of the 10 million 15- to 19-year-olds in the country today, about 2 million (20 percent) have mental health problems. And over the past 20 years maybe a dozen of these tens of millions have had such severe problems they killed classmates.
Berman and I spoke for over an hour, barely scratching the surface of the issue. But, from an adolescent medicine perspective, he was clear: ID kids with mental health issues and get them help.
Will that solve the problem? Of course not. But it’s a place to begin.
Just like expanding background checks to ensure no gun is sold without the buyer being vetted will help. (Rest easy, we do that in this state and it’s not an onerous requirement.)
Of course we first have to fix the vetting process, it’s broken.
Raise the age limit for purchase of an “assault weapon?”
Maybe. But first you have to define an assault weapon, because bona fide hunting rifles, such as the legendary 1963 Browning BAR, 1952 Remington Model 740, and 1910 Winchester which, while looking different than an AR-15, function exactly the same way (and shoot more powerful bullets!).
Next, understand that even raising the purchase age by three years probably won’t make a real difference. Adam Lanza stole his mother’s AR-15, Jaylen Fryberg stole his father’s handgun, Arcan Cetin used a stolen .22 caliber “plinker” to kill in Burlington’s Macy’s, and the kids at Columbine didn’t use “assault rifles.”
Treating all semi-auto rifles as pistols, with a 21 year-old purchase requirement, is again not onerous, is doable, but of doubtful efficacy.
Finally, banning bump-stocks nationally, as we did here, won’t reduce the incidence of school shootings, but might make folks feel safer; just like reducing magazine capacity to 10 rounds won’t slow shooters down, except in the minds of people who have never done an actual reload.
Of course the key to even the most rudimentary solution is funding. It’s gonna cost to fix the vetting system. It’s gonna cost, lots, to fix the mental health delivery system.
And it’s up to the president, Congress, governors and state legislatures to allocate the funds for any serious fix to the curse of kids killing kids.
But even if we paid to fix “everything,” we still must overcome theft, and the lapses, oversights, and just plain incompetence that lets disturbed kids like Adam Lanza (26 dead), Nikolas Cruz (17 dead), and Seung-Hui Cho (32 dead) at Virginia Tech slip through the cracks.
Dr. Berman’s got it right. We can’t turn back the clock, today is today. But today is the best day to start doing what we need to do: focusing on the at-risk kids putting our kids at risk. Anyone who tells you “common sense” gun laws are going to solve the problem of kids killing kids is blowing smoke, or smoking blow.
They aren’t serious about finding serious solutions, they’re just a dromedary putting a nose under the tent.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
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